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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 104. 



testing spirit and rebellion against the theologi- 

 cal trammels of his time betray an infusion of 

 Oerman blood. His materialism he inherited 

 from his father, and the son never deviated 

 from the anti-theological training received 

 under the paternal roof. His biographer writes 

 from the same ultra-materialistic point of view, 

 one scarcely justified in these days of broader 

 and more liberal thought. 



Vogt entered the laboratory of Liebig at 

 Oiessen, in what year his biographer does not 

 state. Here he began his life-long friendships 

 with Woehler, Bunsen, Hofmann, Kopp, Kecule 

 and other chemists. His first scientific paper 

 (1837) gave the results of a comparative analy- 

 sis of the water of the amnion at different 

 periods of foetal life. His father, disgusted 

 with the narrow governmental restrictions of 

 the Grand Duke of Hesse, moved to Berne. 

 Meanwhile at Geissen Vogt had concealed an 

 insurgent in his room, thus risking the penalty 

 of five years' imprisonment in a fortress. The 

 young medical candidate escaped to Strasburg, 

 where he soon neglected medicine and politics, 

 devoting himself to zoology and paleontology. 

 He then studied physiology with Valentin, and 

 thus took his doctor's degree at the age of 21. 

 In this year (1839) his first zoological paper, 

 on the nervous system of Python, appeared. 



Meanwhile Agassiz, already distinguished, 

 went in June, 1838, from Neuch^el to Berne to 

 confer with Prof. William Vogt, the uncle of 

 Carl, who recommended as Ms assistants Desor 

 and Vogt. The former was at once invited to 

 !Neuch&;tel, his comrade Vogt joining him a few 

 months after. At this time, as is well known, 

 Vogt wrote the ' Embryogenie et Anatomic des 

 Salmones,' a masterly work. Here Agassiz, 

 ' le chef inconteste,' worked, housing, clothing 

 and feeding his suite of proletariat collabora- 

 tors, in the fashion so well known to all the 

 world. 



During this life of plain living and high 

 thinking at Neuchatel, from 1839 to 1844, Vogt 

 published numerous memoirs. He also formed 

 one of the rare spirits who tabernacled for the 

 four summers of 1839 to 1843 on the glacier of 

 the Aar, in the famous Sotel des Neuchdtelois, 

 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. Here, as 

 Blanchard wrote : 



" Agassiz ne perd jamais sa bonne humeur. 

 Desor s'ahandonne volontiers d la plaisanterie, 

 Carl Vogt, toujours petillant d^ esprit et capable 

 de mettre en gaiete une assemblee de Trappistes, ne 

 laisse a personne le droit de s^ennuyer.'^ 



For his gruff but hearty manner, Vogt re- 

 ceived the nickname of ' Mutz,' or the bear of 

 Berne. 



In 1841, at the meeting of the German natu- 

 ralists, Vogt supported, against Van Buch, the 

 new theory of Venetz, Charpentier and Agassiz 

 on the former extension of glaciers, and the 

 next year appeared his Im Gebirg und auf den 

 Oletschern. 



In 1844 we see Vogt at Paris living in tihe 

 room on the fourth story once occupied by Von 

 Baer, his fellow lodger being Quetelet. They 

 attended the lectures of Arago, Milne-Edwards, 

 Brongniart and Leverrier, his evenings being 

 passed with his fellow students Doyere, Quatre- 

 fages, Charles Martins, Bertrand, Sainte-Claire 

 Deville, Wiirtz, Dumas, Vulpian, Broca and 

 others destined to become distinguished in sci- 

 ence and literature. 



The three years spent in Paris were busy, 

 prolific, fecund. His vacations were spent 

 partly at St. Malo, where he worked on the 

 embryology of gastropods ; other summers were 

 spent in Brittany, in the Black Forest and in the 

 Vosges, and a winter in Italy ; afterwards 

 he worked at Nice, and finally at Villefranche. 

 In 1846 appeared his Lehrbuch der Geologie 

 und Petrefactenkunde, which went through five 

 editions ; discarding the theory universally held 

 as to the molten interior of the earth, Vogt 

 boldly claimed that the heat was due to meta- 

 morphism. 



The Physiologische Briefe (1847), in two vol- 

 umes, with its audacious views and uncompro- 

 mising materialism, its caustic irony and thrusts 

 at everything venerated by the clerical circles, 

 made a great stir. It was widely read in the 

 German universities and translated into va- 

 rious languages. It treated, for the first time, 

 of the embryonic development of the human 

 body, showing to the laity that man's develop- 

 ment is like that of the brutes. Vogt's famous 

 definition of thought has scarcely yet ceased to 

 be criticised and execrated in some quarters. 

 He wrote : ' ' Toutes les proprietes que nous desig- 



